"It's not a good thing for digital radio to have it close," said Bluemel, whose station has an average weekly reach of 698,000 listeners, marginally ahead of 6 Music, which had 695,000 in the last three months of 2009.

"We could run the station on a quarter of that budget. There is no reason to kill 6 Music. They should just kill some of the cost. It is a ridiculous amount of money to run a station that size," Bluemel said.

Planet Rock is loss-making but Bluemel said he hoped it would break even, on a monthly basis, by the end of this year.

Bluemel said he had "tentative conversations" with Dickinson and hoped to speak to him again this week. "Bruce is interested in doing a show for Planet Rock and I am interested in having him. Whether we can put a deal together remains to be seen," he added.

"Rock is evolving and we should evolve a bit with it," said Bluemel. "Otherwise you end up playing to a lot of dead people. You can't keep playing the same records but we have got a massive playlist and we will always be playing Led Zeppelin, Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath and AC/DC."

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